After 25 years, Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive are still working to democratize knowledge
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Thursday, March 24, 2022
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After 25 years, Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive are still working to democratize knowledge“Corporations continue to control access to materials that are in the library, which is controlling preservation, and it’s killing us.” By Joshua Benton. |
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Putin's control over Ukraine war news is being challenged by online news and risk-taking journalistsA few recent examples of journalistic defiance show that the Kremlin can't guarantee full control over Russian journalists during the war. By Sarah Oates. |
What We’re Reading
Associated Press / Tali Arbel
Stephen Wilhite, inventor of the meme-favorite GIF, has died →
“Wilhite was working at CompuServe in 1987 when he invented the GIF. ‘I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,’ he told The New York Times in 2013, saying the first image was an airplane and insisting that the file had only one pronunciation – a soft ‘G,’ like Jif peanut butter. Those using the hard ‘G,’ as in ‘got’ or ‘given,’ ‘are wrong,’ he said. ‘End of story.’"
The Objective / Naomi Andu
The collapse of the Texas Observer →
“The progressive magazine was hiring diversely and pouring resources into investigations and the journalists who wanted to pursue them. Then it started bleeding staff.”
Gawker / Tarpley Hitt
What happens when “journalist brands” involve actual brands? →
“[A] recent incident at The Cut illuminates some of the ethical and material gray areas in instances when journalist-branding involves actual brands.”
The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
A “fixer” was killed in Ukraine. She was doing one of journalism’s most thankless jobs. →
"'[W]hat a fixer provides is unparalleled knowledge of the subject at hand and, more importantly, access to people and places that nobody else has. A good fixer presents options A, B and C, no matter what the client is looking for.’"
Slate Magazine / Molly Olmstead
Meet the reporter who investigated sexual harassment in his own evangelical Christian newsroom →
“I believe in truth over tribalism, and in my experience, my Christian commitments and journalistic commitments go together.”
Inside Science / Chris Gorski
Inside Science will no longer publish new content →
“It’s with great sadness that the team and I share that we will cease publishing new articles, videos and other content on March 31. That’s because the organization that founded Inside Science, the American Institute of Physics, has decided to reallocate its finite resources to further support advancing the physical sciences.”
Science / Kai Kupferschmidt
Studying — and fighting — misinformation should be a top scientific priority according to this biologist →
"’Misinformation has reached crisis proportions…It poses a risk to international peace, interferes with democratic decision-making, endangers the well-being of the planet, and threatens public health.’"
San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle is launching a meteorological team to go in-depth on Bay Area weather →
“With the Bay Area seeing first-hand the negative impact of climate change, now is the exact time to launch an initiative that goes beyond the forecast and explores the science of weather.”
Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
BuzzFeed management has reportedly offered buyouts to 36 out of 100 BuzzFeed News employees →
“We won't be able to do as many year-or-more, long-gestating, moonshot investigations, but we will still do them,” said interim editor-in-chief Samantha Henig. “We'll just need to be even more strategic about the targets, if we're going to support projects that are quite that resource-intensive.”
The Wire / Staff
Indian journalists appeal to the government to curb anti-Muslim hatred →
“A dangerous hysteria is being built up countrywide to push the idea that ‘Hinduism is in danger’ and to portray Muslim Indians as a threat to Hindu Indians and to India itself … These calls for violence have been met with a cold and calculated silence from the country's top leaders.”
BBC News
The BBC is using drone footage to show the extent of destruction in Ukraine →
Drones captured the extent of devastation in Kyiv, Mariupol, and other locations from above.
Washington Post / Meryl Kornfield and Brittany Shammas
Russian journalist Oksana Baulina is at least the fifth reporter to die covering war in Ukraine →
“Baulina was ‘an amazingly brave Russian journalist,’ tweeted Christo Grozev, an investigative reporter at Bellingcat, adding that she was ‘killed by her own country's army shelling civilian areas in the Podol district in Kyiv.'”
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